Late Triassic | carnian age

Carnian Age

The Carnian Age is the first stage of the three to occur during the duration of the mass extinction era. The Carnian age developed about 228 to 217 million years ago, and signals the start of the Late Triassic Epoch. The Carnian stage can further be broken down to relative species activity during the time, based on fossils and evidence found dating back to this time period. For example, marine life such as serenites nanseni and Trachyceras Obesum can be dated back to the early Carnian stage. Meanwhile, Tropites Dilleri,Tropites Welleri and klamathites macrolobatus can all be dated back to the late Carnian stage, During the Carnian era, archosaurs took on a powerful role in existence and domination in terms of land and resources. The archosaur species included animals similar to today's crocodile and general large lizards. Many families of prehistoric animals existed during this time period, such as the phytosaurs, ornithosuchids, prestosuchids, rauisuchids and poposaur archosaurs populated many areas of the earth, and were scattered among areas such as today's India, North America, South America, Africa and Britain. Evidence of fossils of such prehistoric animals have been found in these parts of the world. However, during the Carnian time period, separation of the northern areas began to occur, which separated the Laurasian supercontinent existing at the time. In addition, the Gondwanaland supercontinent of the South also began to separate and disperse itself. However, Pangaea was still intact at this time. During these land mass separations, regions were extremely tectonically active, which caused cataclysmic flows of lava, which would eventually lead to rift lines and land separation. Inevitably, this signified the start to the eventual Late Triassic mass extinction.